Category: Columns

As the mayor’s race continues to unfold, the election season rite of local Republicans trying to morph themselves into “moderates” palatable to the ever-malleable Democratic electorate in San Diego continues. The most recent example of this is Nathan Fletcher’s announcement that he is coming back from Sacramento to save San Diego.

As reported in the Union Tribune and KPBS Fletcher has a vision:

“When I look at the city I see an amazing potential for the future of San Diego over the next decade and I believe I represent a new generation of leadership that can get us there . . . “

I realize that I am not a restaurant reviewer – although I always thought it would be fun to be one – and I also realize that this restaurant is not in the 92106/92107 zip code, but it is pretty darn close – 92110 – on Midway (3185 to be precise), but I was served one of the best meals I have had in years. The “PUNJAB RESTAURANT, Taste of the Himalayas” smelled divine as we entered the small restaurant for lunch. There were 3 of us; all women that had met when we were in a water aerobics class at the “Y”.

In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, author Jonathan Franzen bemoans the pervasive tendency of more and more of us to get lost on Facebook or to drift away on a video game or some other enticing gadget. We are, he argues, substituting “liking” for love, screen surfing for life:

Let me toss out the idea that, as our markets discover and respond to what consumers most want, our technology has become extremely adept at creating products that correspond to our fantasy ideal of an erotic relationship, in which the beloved object asks for nothing and gives everything, instantly, and makes us feel all powerful, and doesn’t throw terrible scenes when it’s replaced by an even sexier object and is consigned to a drawer.

I am so excited to learn that our fair city, albeit our “drunken city”, has been certified as “tsunami prepared.” I knew those signs going up on Newport Avenue meant something. I just wasn’t sure what it meant.

News item: The Mayor of San Diego Proclaims June “San Diego Craft-Beer Month”

Isn’t that just wonderful? What’s next? “Smoke a cigarette a day month?” Or…”Take your Dog to Work Month”, or “Change Your Motor Oil Month” or “Smoke a Joint month” or some other nonsense.

Maybe it could be “Have a San Diego Craft Beer and Get Behind the Wheel ” month. Or….”Help A Policeman Obtain His DUI Quota” month. This proclamation is one of the more ridiculous proclamations the mayor has endorsed.

Buddy, my 10 year old Golden Retriever, has been asking for a companion for many months now. Since his Alpha Male died – my husband Bob – he seems to be looking for someone else to take his place. True, he has me, but I don’t run with him the way Bob did; I do walk with him, but we spend so much time “watering” people’s lawns that neither of us is getting a good cardio workout.

Less than a week after dodging the end of the world as we know it, Californians were met with the news that Grover Norquist, the hatchet-man of the hard right, had come to Sacramento and was roaming the hallways of the Capitol reminding Republican legislators (all but a handful of whom had signed his notorious pledge to never raise taxes) that bad things would happen if they reconsidered. Norquist, who conservative pundit Tucker Carlson once called “a mean-spirited, humorless, dishonest little creep . . . the leering, drunken uncle everyone else wishes would stay home,” is a darkly looming figure. As Drake Bennett recently pointed out in Business Week…

I’m sitting writing on a day that can’t decide whether it wants to be sunny or gray, a day about three days past the day that the world was to come to an end and it’s a rather nice day, by the way.

But I can surely identify with a doomsday. My children and I woke up one day, just living our lives pretty comfortably, no shining ups, particularly, or dim lows, and before the day had bid us goodbye the world as we had known it was snatched from beneath us with the swiftness and fierceness of lightning in a storm ridden sky – and all we could do was cry. On July 22nd of 2009 we lost our precious valentine, an amazing mother, a beautiful sexy brilliant artistic athletic incredible 62 year old human being I loved referring to as mine.

Back in 1942 the narrator of Jim Thompson’s seminal noir account of San Diego, Now and On Earth observed that:

San Diego, prior to the establishment of the aircraft factories, was not inappropriately dubbed the “City of the Living Dead.” There were no industries, there was no construction; the town’s one asset was its climate. If you were young and wanted excitement and had a living to make, why, the town wouldn’t want you and you wouldn’t want it. If you were old and had a small income or pension, you couldn’t have found a more attractive place to live (or die) in.

The countdown to rapture has begun. Should I wear my trousers rolled? Do I dare to eat a peach? Nah. Better make a cake!

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The Mesa College Theatre Company, working with the San Diego Black Ensemble and Vagabond Theatre Project, is producing a series of staged readings, “Pioneers and the Journey: A Festival of African American Plays” to explore the African American Experience – an experience in and of itself based on my experiences within the experience, experiencely speaking if there is such a term (big smile)

In my last column, I ruefully noted that the thought of any revenue increase is verboten in Republican circles, but the same could be said for many Democrats driven by fear of being assailed as a “tax and spend” liberal. Indeed as recent polling suggests, a majority of Californians think the state budget has gotten bigger when, in fact, the general fund spending has shrunk by over $20 billion as taxes on the rich and corporations have gone down. Why the inaccurate public perception? In the final part of “Indy by the Sea” I ask the question:

Where do people get the idea that they are overtaxed in a country where people pay fewer taxes than citizens of most other industrialized countries and have a much smaller “welfare state”?